India’s tiger population increased 30% in three years; country now has 2,226 tigers – 70% of world’s population

Good news for wildlife conservationists and tiger lovers. The tiger population has jumped in India from 1,706 in 2011 to 2,226 in 2014. The latest tiger census, released by Indian environment minister Prakash Javadekar, on 20 January 2015, shows that India — which has 70 per cent of the world’s tigers — has registered an increase of 30 per cent in country’s tiger population in the past three years.

“While the tiger population is falling in the world, it is rising in India. It is a great news”, said Javadekar. Referring to the census exercise, he said, “Never before such an exercise has been undertaken in that massive scale where we have unique photographs of 80 per cent of the country’s tigers”.

If one look at the 2008 tiger census figure, the current increase is simply phenomenal. India’s tiger population was 1,411 in 2008. Tiger census is carried out after a gap of every three years by the National Tiger Conservation Authority (NTCA) in the country.

According to the 2011 tiger census report, the tiger population estimated was 1,706 (i.e. ranging between a minimum of 1,571 to a maximum of 1,875). The results included figures from 17 states of the country having tiger population.

The latest figures show that Karnataka has the highest number of tigers in the age group of 1.5 years and more. The state has 408 tigers in that age group followed by 340 in Uttarakhand, 308 in Madhya Pradesh, 229 in Tamil Nadu, 190 in Maharashtra, 167 in Assam, 136 in Kerala and 117 in Uttar Pradesh.

In 2008 the tiger population was 1411. The Tiger Census report that year had classified the tiger occupied forests in India into 6 landscape — (a) Shivalik-Gangetic Plains, (b) Central Indian Landscape Complex (c) Eastern Ghats, (d) Western Ghats, (e) North-Eastern Hills and Bhramaputra Plains, and (f) Sunderbans. (Times of India)

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